New photos from inside the National Museum of Palmyra compared with images from less than a decade ago offer a stark contrast of what was

Before Islamic State’s 10-month reign in historic Palmyra, its museum was home to some of Syria’s oldest and best-preserved statues and artifacts. Thousands of tourists visited the Palmyra Museum, founded in the 1960s, each year. But as militants closed in last spring, Syrian antiquities officials raced through its halls, moving many of its contents to secure storage locations elsewhere in the country.